Philip Perkins Posted February 20, 2014 Report Share Posted February 20, 2014 I'm actually with the director on this--having it happen live does make a diff in performance, and if the result isn't the world's greatest piano /vocal recording, well that wasn't the intention anyhow. It's a movie, not a record or CD, right? I think doing the full platter--speaker+earbug, boom mic + lav will give your posties what they need to make the scene work. And if they ultimately decide it didn't work out well they can always ADR. philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrd456 Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 use a directional lav for wireless---the director must have loved Les Miserables, but he doesn't realize this is a different set-up.----I assume this is a oner or you have to use a metronome for the piano player. J.D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mpsanos Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Early in the read I was thinking ... what do you mean muted? with the lid up , down? " Closed " ok. pianos sound like crap closed, would not sound like the sample ... my 2 cent's For monitor speaker placement I'd suggest flying overhead off axis the shotgun. mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted February 21, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Early in the read I was thinking ... what do you mean muted? with the lid up , down? " Closed " ok. pianos sound like crap closed, would not sound like the sample ... my 2 cent's For monitor speaker placement I'd suggest flying overhead off axis the shotgun. mike Muted inside (felt treatment to hammers, strings, etc.) so that the actress, who does not play piano, can "play" without the baby grand making any sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wandering Ear Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Muted inside (felt treatment to hammers, strings, etc.) so that the actress, who does not play piano, can "play" without the baby grand making any sound. You could bring in a piano tech and have them add a temporary stop rail to the hammers so they won't strike the strings at all, creating little to no sounds at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJBerto Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Would you want to hi-pass the signal going to the speaker to take advantage of a shotguns increased rejection of high frequency arriving off axis? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Karlsson Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 One idea: Have the keyboard player play a midi controller keyboard via a DAW, such as Logic or Pro Tools. Load a sampled Grand Piano (both DAWs mentioned come with decent sounding ones) and route the output via interface/sound-card to a powered speaker for the actress to hear the piano. Record the MIDI. This way the right piano sound, perfectly clean, can be picked later. An added benefit is that any timing / small mistakes (in an otherwise good take) can be adjusted -after the fact-. +1 for Lav on actress +1 for cutting low end of the piano coming out of the speaker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JP Evans Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 I absolutely agree with a lo-fi, low volume playback. I've done it in a pinch with no warning from production. We had a pianist play a "circled take" which I recorded properly, and we simultaneously recorded it with an iPhone in Voice Memo mode. Really. For playback, we set the phone on the piano, out of frame, low volume. The actress mimed the piano, and I recorded her vocals. Worked like a charm! When it aired I was quite happy, well, nearly shocked, with the result. Since your application is live, I might suggest that the actor and your pianist maintain a line of sight to each other. They can read each other's subtle cues this way, you know, like actual musicians! If the set doesn't allow a physical line of sight, you could involve the camera dept to provide reference feeds. I am imagining your actor being able to see two monitors out of frame with a medium shot of your pianist. Almost as if they were prompter feeds. It could be a fun day! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Seems to me that we are starting to over think it now. JW knows what to do, fulfill the Directors demand. Will it work? Things do have a way of working out. Stay tuned. CrewC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mpsanos Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Thanks Jeff. Yes Crew, it does sound that way (no pun), but one more. The Jawbone Jambox in the piano trick. mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freeheel Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Hi Jeff Does having a real MIDI controlled piano played remotely by your actual performer make any sense? It sure will sound like a real piano. You can mic it properly for it's sound and get your singer on the boom. I haven't used one in over a decade and am not sure about latency or about how well it would track a remote keyboard but what I recall about the Yamaha Disklavier makes me think it could work for you. http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/disklaviers/ Cheers, Brent Calkin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 I've always wondered if something like this http://www.holosonics.com Would work. A directional speaker that the performer could hear but not picked up by the mic. Though wether it actually would work well enough for this purpose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Karlsson Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Seems to me that we are starting to over think it now. JW knows what to do, fulfill the Directors demand. Will it work? Things do have a way of working out. Stay tuned. CrewC Yeah, no doubt I think there's a tendency amongst all of us to jump to the conclusion that things need to be "perfect" sound wise. If the scene called for it to be a featured song, like a music video, surely the director would want it treated it as such and want to go about it accordingly. We do not know what the scene really is. Could be a 3 second cut of another character walking by/into the room and the piano thing is in the background... perhaps it's not even supposed to be a good performance, maybe the character is a hack and sings off key as part of the story...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikewest Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Have done this several times Did I miss the suggestion above? Yep lav on the actress and and earwig with a countdown on the music track Good luck sir! mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 You would think that my over 40 years of experience would be able to make a convincing argument for doing this the right way, but no, it's not looking too good. Jesus, Jeff, if they won't even listen to you, the rest of us don't have a chance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Reineke Posted February 21, 2014 Report Share Posted February 21, 2014 Back in my music recording days, (daze) when a singer didn't like HPs and wanted a 'live' speaker monitor, I'd put up two, flip the phase on one and position them accordingly. Of coarse the singer was iso'd from the band or for overdubs. In this case the earwig is an better approach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundmanjohn Posted February 22, 2014 Report Share Posted February 22, 2014 There is another way to do this, by using a Yamaha Disklavier MIDI-controlled piano. They do a nice baby grand and you can either send it a pre-programmed MIDI sequence or have a remote MIDI keyboard "play" the piano via a MIDI cable from out of shot. I've used these in theatre shows a couple of times with excellent results. Hire costs shouldn't be that great and the results will be a lot better than the digital piano/loudspeaker version. Regards, John Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted February 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 22, 2014 Good suggestion and I have used Disklavier "self-playing" pianos before, but in this scene, the actress is "playing" a true baby grand on the set. It has been muted and we're never making any attempt to see her hands playing the piano. We still need to solve the problem of playing through a speaker or a silent earpiece. It's all going to work out, I'm sure, I would just like them to make some decisions sooner rather than later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted February 22, 2014 Report Share Posted February 22, 2014 There are so many productions that will plan camera shots, costumes, set design, and lighting down to minute detail but still think that all sound needs to do is "throw a mic up there somewhere." It seems that about 80% of my preparation is for options on how it might be done -- if... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacob Gustavsson Posted February 23, 2014 Report Share Posted February 23, 2014 I know, I know! Hide the performer inside the baby grand! He'll know what to do! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Hayes Posted February 23, 2014 Report Share Posted February 23, 2014 Oh hey Jeff, i didn't realise a silent earpiece was an option! If that is the case you should be able to get a really good live recording. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundmanjohn Posted February 23, 2014 Report Share Posted February 23, 2014 I know, I know! Hide the performer inside the baby grand! He'll know what to do! Like this? Dylan Moran, Nina Conti, Tamsin Greig and the supremely talented Bill Bailey. Watch the whole episode, if you can. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacob Gustavsson Posted February 23, 2014 Report Share Posted February 23, 2014 Like this? Dylan Moran, Nina Conti, Tamsin Greig and the supremely talented Bill Bailey. Watch the whole episode, if you can. John Yes, exactly like that! Call Bill Bailey right away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Watson Posted February 23, 2014 Report Share Posted February 23, 2014 Unfortunately, no, for several reasons: for one, the piano lid is closed, also, any speaker small enough to hide inside the piano would not have sufficient fidelity to honestly produce the right sound. Maybe, maybe not. I seem to recall that some piano company made an electric concert grand piano years ago. Quick 'net search turns the Yamaha CP70B. IIRC it will take a MIDI input, or perhaps someone modified one to take a MIDI input, I just don't remember. Anyway, something like this might be a place to start -- so that you end up with a sound that originates with the piano on stage, so that the room acoustics are believable, but that is still played by a remote keyboard. But most important, it sounds like a real piano, especially in the lower registers. No single monitor speaker is going to achieve that, no matter where you place it. But this might. Why would you want to do this? So that you could mic it like you would an actual concert performance. Instead of trying to swim against the current and isolate the singer and the piano and mix them together later, just go ahead and record it stereo like the live performance it actually is, mixed in the field. That at least has the advantage that the producers / director / actor can listen to it in the field and determine if they need that extra take or not. They want it "real"? This is a way to give them what they want maybe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted February 23, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2014 Oh hey Jeff, i didn't realise a silent earpiece was an option! If that is the case you should be able to get a really good live recording. Well, silent earpiece is only an option if I can convince them that it is the right way to do it! Doing it with an earpiece solves any and all potential problems, givers them all the flexibility in the world to put the scene together properly, but I'm still having a problem convincing them of all these things (and few allies on board because there is no one else in post on the movie at this point --- no music coordinator, no music editor, no post sound people). The picture editor, a really good guy and an old friend, understands this completely and he is confident that we will ultimately be able to do the scene properly (earpiece) on the day (which doesn't shoot until late in March). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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